The Nashville community is grappling with the recent events surrounding the death of 30-year-old Myles Owens V, whose run from the law came to a tragic end this morning. According to a statement obtained by the Nashville Police Department, Owens was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the garage of a South Nashville home, sitting in a stolen vehicle. Despite the efforts of the responding FBI SWAT team to take him into custody, Owens was pronounced dead at Vanderbilt University Medical Center shortly after.
Before becoming a headline for his apparent suicide, Owens was on law enforcement's radar for numerous offences. A federal criminal complaint charged him with possession of an unregistered firearm, possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, and possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. Moreover, he was evading 20 failure to appear in court charges in Davidson County, and two in Williamson County. His criminal activities were exposed when police searched Extra Space Storage, uncovering an arsenal and a stash that included 119 pounds of marijuana, cocaine, pills, and methamphetamine.
The operation that ended with Owens' death also led to the apprehension of another suspect, Kenneth Strickland Jr., 31. Strickland inadvertently walked onto the crime scene and was found to have an outstanding warrant for identity theft. Detectives, upon taking Strickland into custody found a key fob that led them to a nearby stolen Infiniti Q60. Inside the vehicle, officers discovered two fake driver licenses bearing Strickland's face with different names, one from Texas and the other from New Jersey.
Strickland now faces charges that include motor vehicle theft, driving on a suspended license, and two additional counts of identity theft, for which his bond is set at $40,500. The search at the Ben Hill Drive home not only revealed the end of Owens but also yielded further evidence of illegal activities, including 70 pounds of marijuana, nearly $50,000 in cash, jewelry, and two firearms, as Nashville Police Department stated. These events shed light on the shadowy workings of local drug and theft operations, opening a window into the complex challenges faced by law enforcement in the region.
